The Church
by moosals
Summary: If only stones could talk, what secrets would they share with the likes of you and me? Would they warn us of the dangers that live amongst us?


**Disclaimer:** Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and all its characters. No copyright infringement is intended.

 **Author's note:** The following is loosely based on a piece of old English folklore that a good friend once shared with me. This story is for her.

And Tracey, if you're reading, there's a little something in here for you too.

* * *

Local history and folklore have always held a particular fascination for me. I've noticed that most tales of strange creatures and even stranger happenings originate in and around old and ancient buildings, or old and ancient stones. Each has its own stories to tell if only stones could talk.

And yet, I found some talking stones, and they told me this peculiar tale. It begins in medieval times in old England, the land of their ancestors and mine.

...

Emmett could hear the men talking in the field beyond the hedgerow. He splashed some more water over his face and wiped his hands on the seat of his trousers. The blood on his shirt would have to wait.

He crept up the riverbank and through the undergrowth, inhaling the damp morning air, but he didn't leave the protective shadow of the trees.

Three men stood nearby, all well dressed, one more so than the other two. They were studying some large pieces of parchment, pointing at the diagrams and then across the field to where other men in well-worn clothes were standing.

One of the men in the distance smelled particularly appealing, but Emmett had only just fed, so he willed himself to be still and patient. The scent would be easy enough to follow later.

He cocked his head to one side and listened intently to the conversation, the furrows on his brow deepening with every spoken word.

...

The old parish church on the north side of town had seen better days. There were signs that the building was beginning to disintegrate. In a few short years, it would be in need of complete restoration.

After much deliberation, the Lord of the Manor announced that the old church should be allowed to fall into disrepair whilst a new one was built. The site that had been agreed upon was on the opposite side of the town in an abandoned field that had come to be considered common land.

The Lord was a keen draughtsman, so he drew up the plans and engaged the workmen. Stonemasons, carpenters, blacksmiths and general labourers from all around were clamouring to work on the new church. They all had families to feed, and an undertaking such as this would keep them in employment for decades to come.

Many of the local boys were eager to help too, hoping to learn skills from their fathers that would, in turn, become their trade when they grew up.

The footings were marked out during the first week of March, just as the bluebells were coming into bloom. It took the workmen four whole days to set the stones exactly as the Lord's foreman directed.

The beech trees which surrounded the field, already dense with bright green foliage, provided a pleasant retreat in the middle of the day when the men sat down to eat their bread and drink their ale.

That Friday evening, there was much celebration in the local inn, although one of the labourers got a little too worse for wear. He was found the next morning in a ditch not far from his home, his body mere skin and bone. He appeared to have suffered a deep, semicircular cut to his wrist. It was assumed that he must have bled out and that the heavy downpour in the night had washed all traces of his blood away.

The townsfolk prayed for his family during the service in the old church on the Sunday. His wife and daughter silently thanked God for his mercy. The priest then led his congregation in prayer for the swift construction of the new church. Work was due to start in earnest the very next morning.

...

When Rosalie and Emmett had last been home, the market town had been much smaller, but having developed a name for its lacemaking, it had prospered and grown through those intervening years.

Their parents, Carlisle and Esme, had lain asleep, buried six feet under the ground, for the best part of a century whilst their younger children searched in vain for their older brother. The local people had long since forgotten to whom the Cullen land belonged.

Some of the trees had been felled and the undergrowth cut back to increase the size of what was now a field, used as common ground for the grazing of sheep and cattle.

And then, one day, that all changed. The people removed their animals from the field, and the workmen arrived, along with their tools and a quantity of large stones.

Having listened long enough, Emmett ran silently through the woods, back the way he had come, intent on finding his mate, who had taken a different course during their hunt. In his distress, he didn't give her time to clean herself. He picked her up, threw her over his shoulder and carried her back to the riverbank adjoining their land.

Quick to understand what was happening, Rosalie washed her face in the river, made herself presentable and walked into the centre of the town. It was market day - the perfect time to catch up on all the local gossip. She could be charming when required, to both men and women.

On her return, the pair watched from the shadows whilst the foreman directed the men, and the men heaved the stones into position. Day after day, they watched. They watched the workmen pack up their tools and stroll into the town to the local inn. They watched as the men got very drunk and stumbled home in the rain to their families and lodgings.

Watching was thirsty work.

They watched as the congregation left the dilapidated, old church on Sunday morning, and then, whilst the whole town slept, they removed every single stone from their land, one by one, and stacked them up in the neighbouring field.

Far better to site the church there than directly over their sleeping parents.

...

It was promising to be a fine day when the men and boys arrived for work early on Monday morning, ready to haul more stones to the site and begin building. Imagine their astonishment when they found that the footing stones they had so carefully laid the week before had all disappeared.

An alarm was sent up to the Manor House, and everyone searched the surround until, eventually, the footing stones were discovered, piled up neatly in the far corner of the neighbouring field.

One might think that this land had been overlooked because of its closer proximity to the river, but no. This particular piece of land belonged to the Lord of the Manor, and he had no intention of losing his income from it when there was common land available on which to build.

The shifting of the stones was believed to be a practical joke, and many an incoming workman cast a glance at the youngsters from the town, suspecting them to be the culprits.

Once the footing stones had been returned to the original site, work began again. Four more days of measuring and marking and laying out of stones, but no one remarked that the lay of the footings had altered, and no one thought to stay and guard the field throughout the night.

...

When Emmett and Rosalie regarded the new layout, they laughed to see that their parents were now lying directly beneath the chancel.

The moon was hidden behind the clouds, but they didn't need its light to see. They paced and measured and memorised, and once again, they lifted and carried the stones, this time taking much more care about how and where they set them down in the neighbouring field.

By sunrise, they had retreated to the shadows to wait and watch.

...

As the sun rose the following day, the workmen returned, tools in hand, but they were shocked to discover that the footing stones had gone missing once more.

Whilst much quicker to find them this time around, the men were confounded to see them laid out in the neighbouring field in the most precise of arrangements. Nothing human could have moved them and repositioned them so meticulously in the dead of a single moonless night.

Whispers went around amongst the men. Conclusions were swiftly drawn. What had transpired could only be the work of the Devil himself.

Fear struck both men and boys, especially those that had come from other towns and villages far away. The incomers gathered up their tools and turned to begin the long walk home.

The Lord of the Manor and his foreman hurried to stop them and ask them what they were about. The foreman's son was despatched to fetch the parish priest.

The elderly priest was an intelligent man, possessed with a certain alacrity of mind that belied his years. Quick was he to turn the situation around, for it would not do for such superstition to spread.

He climbed upon a footing stone and cried out, "This is not the Devil's work! This is the Hand of God, showing us the right and proper place to build his house!"

Fears quashed, the men returned and laid out their tools once more, and the Lord of the Manor quietly cursed the loss of revenue from his field.

...

Each subsequent night, Emmett and Rosalie uprooted and replanted the trees on their parents' land, gradually shifting the edge of the woodland forward to where it had once been a century before. Using stones and timber pilfered from the neighbouring field, they built themselves a little cottage.

When Carlisle and Esme were awoken from their slumber, some years into the construction of the church, they were very thirsty indeed. It had always been their practice to steer clear of feeding on the local folk, but needs must, and as the town had recently grown in population with incoming workmen, perhaps the need to travel was not quite so immediate.

Their first meal was one of the masons, who was working late by candlelight, alone in the bell tower. They shared him, of course, and then Emmett and Rosalie entombed the desiccated body within the stonework.

The next to disappear was a young carpenter. He had come down from the north in search of work but had not been the most diligent of workers. The other men thought him to be a lazy good-for-nothing, and as the previous day had been payday, they assumed he had scarpered.

By the time the church was nearing its completion, over twenty of the visiting tradesmen had become a meal, and over twenty tradesmen had become a part of the fabric of the church building, hidden here and there in the stone walls or under the heavy flagstones that lined the floor of the church.

On the day of the official opening, people came from far and wide to celebrate the dedication of the new church, but not quite so many people returned home. None of the locals went missing, however, for that would have surely raised concerns on such an auspicious occasion.

...

More than two hundred years went by with the family always returning to their home in the field alongside the church. In that time, the church had undergone a change of governance, and by necessity, the Cullen family had undergone a change of diet.

Keeping their nature secret had become increasingly difficult, and in order to maintain their food supply without attracting attention, the family had resorted to feeding from animals, wild and farmed. Yet that would not save them once the witch hunts began.

The people in the town had grown suspicious of any strangers coming and going, and they had begun to notice an increase in the disappearance of their livestock. The family would have to keep their wits about them.

Wandering through the gravestones, one evening, Rosalie overheard a bereaved couple talking of leaving for the Americas to start a fresh life. She relayed the conversation to her parents and mate, and accepting they might never see the return of their long lost son and brother, the four agreed it was time to cross the ocean.

It was to be over three hundred years before a member of the Cullen family returned to the town and the crumbled ruins of the cottage hidden in the woods beside the church.

...

Many a priest had lived their lives in the service of the church and its community over the centuries, but as the world changed around it, its congregation had dwindled.

As the new millennium approached, most churchgoers were of the older generation, and as a member of that generation himself, the rector struggled to engage with his younger parishioners.

One dark December day, dressed in a long black cassock, a young priest arrived to ease the elderly rector's burden. His sermons proved so very popular that people began to flock to the church in droves, from the town and the surrounding villages.

If the parishioners noticed that the young priest's eyes were an unusual shade of golden yellow, they didn't comment on it, for his voice was as soft as velvet and it soothed their very souls.

...

A heavy mist hung in the air on the first day of January, and with the temperature close to freezing, there was little hope of the sun breaking through.

Edward was washing his hands in the icy waters of the river when he heard voices coming from the graveyard further up the bank.

He shook off most of the water, wiped his hands over his face and ran his fingers through his long, bronze hair, slicking it back off his forehead. He made his way back up the bank and sat down on the damp grass to put on his socks and shoes and roll down the legs of his black trousers.

He cocked his head to one side. There were two voices, both female, but he could only hear one mind.

Standing up and brushing himself off, he took the starched, white band from his pocket and slotted it back into the collar of his black shirt. Curious to see the woman whose mind he could not read, he stole through the trees bordering the graveyard.

Only then, hidden in the shadows, did he breathe in the damp morning air. His entire body stiffened. He had never smelled such a delectable scent in all his life.

Jaw clenched and hands fisted, he stalked out of the trees towards the two figures that were wandering amongst the gravestones.

"I've found it!" the taller women shouted in excitement, her American accent grating on Edward's sensitive ears.

"Mom?"

"This is it! The grave of Mary Higgenbotham. Come and see, Bella."

...

The disappearance of two American tourists went completely unnoticed by the town, as the pair had checked out of the inn early that morning.

The sudden departure of the young clergyman, however, caused great distress and consternation, particularly amongst the single ladies of the parish who had hoped to be the one to capture his heart and his hand.

The church felt no such disturbance, for its stones had stood on that spot for half a millennium, keeping all its secrets, and it would likely do so for millennia to come.


End file.
